Long Fun Days

I started out this month attempting to blog every day. I made it until this past week. Then I disappeared for a few days. Sorry about that...in the meantime - here are some things that have been keeping me too busy to be spending too much time blogging.

Wednesday I decided to go to MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers). I have attended in the past but haven't been able to make it much this year. This was their Christmas cookie swap so I made six dozen chocolate caramel cookies. There were a lot of cookies there! See....

It was a lot of fun to sit and chat with my friends for the morning but this was the start of a pretty busy day for us. Immediately after MOPS I had worship team practice - I now sing with one of the worship teams for our church & I'm loving it.

After that I headed down to a friend's house (about an hour away) & snapped some photos of her kiddos for Christmas. Kerry is a great coupon lady. She knows how to work the deals to the best advantage. She offered to take me over to the local Shaw's and show me the ropes. Here is what I brought home...

9 cans of Progresso Soup

5 Perdue roasting chickens

6 boxes of Green Giant veggies

6 bags of Chex Mix

4 packages of "pub burgers"

3 ham steaks

So, want to know what I paid out-of-pocket for all that? Of course you do! Thanks to Kerry showing me how to work the deals and coupons, I walked out of the store with all this for a mere $30 and change. I can't even tell you what she brought home but it was around 20 cans of soup & 16 boxes of muffin mix for less than $0.50 out-of-pocket (OOP). Amazing. I am so going to be doing more of this!!!

Earlier in the day I even went to the bread outlet and came out with this:

2 bags of mini bagels

2 loafs of oat nut bread

2 loafs of split wheat bread

1 loaf of soft white wheat bread

2 packages of multi-grain English muffins

1 bag of chocolate animal crackers (J5 came in the store with me)

This cost me a mere $14. Now that I have my freezer - buying up sales and at outlets will be much more doable. I'm so thankful.

After our field trip I took the boy to their favorite place for supper - McDonald's of course! And who was there but the big guy...

We were going through the drive through as I was heading to my sister's and saw that Santa was there that day & they were taking free photos. The only catch, you had to come back the next day to pick them up. Happily I had my digital camera with  me & they didn't mind me taking my own snapshots. I did have to convince the boys to walk up and talk to him, but considering we parked and got out in the freezing cold weather to walk in to the store, they had to go at least say "hi." I think they enjoyed it at the end. 

The next highlight for my boys was going through the automatic car wash. We do this near home quite a bit especially in the winter. Salted winter roads can take a tole on vehicles here in Maine. The one we typically use - we drive in and sit there while these large poles move around us spewing out water and cleaners. It's a "no-touch" car wash.  This car wash though  was different. It's a "gentle-touch" car wash. I pulled in and my left tire sat in a track. I paid & then put the truck in neutral and we were pulled through. We had rollers and brushes and all sorts of things coming at us and gently cleaning the truck. The boys were hooting and hollering and just throughly enjoying themselves. My confession: These car washes totally freak me out. Seriously. I was happy to have the boys with me as it wasn't quite as freaky but I do not like doing these by myself. I know - sad isn't it.

We headed to my sister's and had supper and a short visit before finally heading home. We had left at 8:30 that morning and arrived home at 8:30 that night. Thankfully Grandad had been willing to watch animals for us. It's been so cold that unless we get the eggs quickly from the chickens they will freeze. We've lost three in the last few weeks. Unfortunately, our chickens aren't laying consistently enough so that we can always manage to get to the eggs before they freeze. We've also been switching out water a couple times each day as it is also freezing up. Oh, the joys of animals. Actually, I am still having fun with it all.

We had a long day on Wednesday but also a lot of fun.